collection1b

April 15, 2016

The Wayback Machine.

This blog on…

I am paranoid about losing data. If I am going to spend all that time and effort researching and writing about something on a pen message board, then it had better have an archive. It’s why I don’t participate much on Pentrace and Zoss. In any case, I save everything I write on multiple hard drives and other storage media. The rule is 3, 2, 1. Save everything in at least three copies, on at least two different storage media, and in at least one off-site location. And always update from old, out-dated storage media to new media, but never throw out the old media. And keep at least one old dinosaur machine on which the old media can be played and retrieved. I passively waited for Wayback to archive my blog, until I figured out that I could actively do it myself. Now, I treat it like a social media website. You can see the evolution of all the mastheads and the frontispiece pictures there, going back in time. This is the link for all four years together, and these are the direct links for the 4 years separately, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017. It’s actually only two years long, but spread out over three years. The only downside is that some of the early posts, which have been revised and expanded since they were originally placed online, are now fossilized in their earlier versions only because everything beyond the first page, or homepage of a website defaults to the earlier captures of the website on Wayback. The only upside of this downside is that the earlier versions of the masthead and background colors are also archived. So, I have no intention of ever shutting down this blog, but if the blog were ever to die out, or disappear, you would always be able to find it archived there, in the Wayback Machine.